It's been over two months since Google gave Nexus 5 and Nexus 7 owners a chance to tinker with the upcoming L release of Android, in what has been the biggest beta test in Android's short history. With all of us waiting on a release sometime in the fourth quarter of 2014, it's gratifying to know that the powers that be are hard at work getting Android L ready for primetime. If the latest updates to the public issue tracker are accurate, some of the biggest and most critical bugs in Android L have been patched.

The most dramatic of these is the Nexus devices' inability to send or receive MMS messages through the default Hangouts app. This only seems to happen on the American carriers AT&T and T-Mobile. Apparently the issue has been resolved: the final message from yesterday reads "The development team has fixed the issue you have reported. This change will be available as part of the next public release," and the status of the bug has been changed to "fixed." According to the letter of the message, you shouldn't expect to see the fix for this problem until Android L is published in its final form.

Thirteen other bugs have been marked as "fixed" in the last 24 hours, with the same indication that they'll be changed in the release build. They range from the annoying (missing emoji, the dialpad's 7 replaced with an "S") to the crippling (lockscreen hangs, absent notifications). You can see all of them, as well as nine more bugs marked "fixed" back in July, by using a filter on the developer preview hub of Code.Google.com. There are still hundreds of bugs that need fixing between now and release time.

We still don't know exactly when a public release of Android L will be available, or indeed, what new hardware or capabilities Google will show off when it comes. (Or what they'll call it.) But given the company's propensity for showing new developer phones in October or November of the last three years, we can reasonably expect something in the next couple of months.

Comments

I just saw that and was literally about to post the same thing. I lol'ed.

someone755

I found the fact that something is jerked up because 3 digits are wider than the others in one font way funnier. xD

Mark

Only in Spanish.

AuroraBorealis?

Immediately reminded me of the Simpsons

wicketr

How does that even happen? It's not as if 'S' is anywhere close to '7' on the keyboard. And was no one even looking at the screen as they were programming. The only thing i can think of is the dialer was developed by a foreigner that doesn't know the Latin characters and was using some foreign alphabet type keyboards and became confused between what a '7' and 'S' were.

pfmiller

Where are you going to find a developer who isn't familiar with latin characters? You don't even need to be a developer, anyone who uses the internet needs to be familiar with them.

wicketr

While true, however, where are you going to find a developer that release a program whose primary purpose is to enter numbers, and they put a freaking "S" in place of a "7". 1 of only 10 digits on the main app home is screwed up.

EC

"Seven" starts with an S. I've been known to typo "F" when I meant 5 before (and vice versa, sometimes), so I can see how it might have happened initially, but it definitely should have been caught on review.

Daniel

Hilariou7 indeed

Mark

"The development team has fixed the issue you have reported. This change will be available as part of the next public release,"

Not final release, or release. "next public release".

This suggests a refresh of the public build before final. I hope they do, its the only way to ensure quality.

lel

Public releases are final releases rest of the builds are developer builds.

Bri

Agreed. The mm-qcamera-daemonn issue and data drops are marked "fixed" in 4.4.4 but I'm still getting them along with a lot of other people.

But about 60% of the "issues" are totally bogus. This app doesn't work, that app doesn't work etc (go speak to the App developer).

Michael

People also post issues with other related Google-managed software that Google needs to fix, but that don't have anything to do with L. It seems Google is just accepting it as some of these have been assigned rather than their old way of handling this, which was marking the bugs as Invalid and telling the reporter to post it in the correct issue tracker. This makes it seem like there are more L bugs, when they actually are not things that should hold L back... For example:

Of course they are...AIO and Cricket are Sprint MVNOs. That's like saying "It also happens on MetroPCS"

Jeff Badger

Except that AIO/Cricket are with AT&T and not MVNOs since they have corporate stores.

James Polk

Mmmmm..... nope. AIO was AT&T. Still some holdover on Sprint with former Cricket customers, but it's all shifting to AT&T's network. I've always been on AT&T's network.

And even with them being on the same network, they are not the same thing. Lots of people having some luck with the MMS issue by adjusting APN settings, which are totally different for Cricket/AIO than for AT&T, even though they are the same network.

Aviv Eliyahu

Theres a bug in RTL languages. the back ,home and menu doesnt appear in landscape mode too bad they didnt fix it (it appears to be on the nexus 7 2013 too)

This is like dashclock....sort of. In the sense that it adds notifications to your lockscreen. This does it without the need for actual lockscreen widgets, and since every music app I know of has a notification, this will do what you want it to. You can also whitelist/blacklist every single app on your device, so if you ONLY want music controls and absolutely no others, that is 100% possible. IMHO, this will be one of the new apps to have in the "L version", since dashclock requires lockscreen widgets to be enabled. Plus this builds on dashclock and adds so many more useful features!!

sup

Don't think that was a bug, we just got a placeholder until they finalize the design.

Josh Rahn

I run the dev preview on my N5 on t-mobile and never had an issue with MMS in hangouts? hmm

Lou M

It only appears to happen for me (T-mobile) when connected to Wi-fi.

Josh Rahn

OMG YES! thanks for triggering that connection in my brain! LOL

Adam Bickley

It happens to me mostly on group messages. Regular MMS (pictures) seem to work fine, as long as it's not a part of a group message. Doesn't matter if wifi is on or off. If I toggle mobile data, the next message will come in. Have to toggle mobile data for each message and then try to read the messages in order.

Michael

"There is an 'S' instead of a 7 in the Dialer" This made me laugh!

Fatal1ty_93_RUS

Next public release? They don't mean.... The final build?

PhoenixP3K

It would be nice and they have an official release in October. Keeping those fix for a final release seems like they're getting ready to ship that version to the masses.

On one hand I hate how Google releases these things early for release. On the other hand, it feels good to be part of a public beta to give them feedback for the final product.

However, most people do not like being part of an experiment. They want the full features as the final product and ready for use.

ltredbeard

Well this wasn't a public beta it is a developers preview. Those ppl who don't "like being part of an experiment" don't have to be since the preview isn't pushed ota or anything of the sort.

Brandon Pinch

I'm running the L preview build on my N5 on the Canadian Bell network - also affected by the MMS bug. Frustrating, and glad its going to be fixed.

bloomtronzero

Wind is a no-go for me as well. Looking forward to stable.

Serge Cebrian

But i want Android LION Now!!

Varun

come on google pls fix the hissing noise and underwater like sound in video recording.

Ross Cohen

Any word on whether one could chromecast from netflix yet?

Jack Thakar

I'm most excited about the RemoteController bug being fixed, as it completely broke my universal music widget

Simon Belmont

The MMS bug affects my Nexus 5 once in a while. I'm on T-Mobile.

Really glad to hear this is finally being squashed. I, for the longest time, thought it might just be a Hangouts problem, but I guess not.

Droidleaks

Android L will most likely be released around the 31st October with the nexus 6 and source will be up shortly after :)

Jose Romero

I hope that L is more than just a visual overhaul and adds smart, useful, and innovative features.

ezgadgetblog

I have been using Android L developer preview on N5 for quite some time and quite pleased with the battery performance and UI tweaks that google has done. I have compiled the list of changes on my latest blog post -